Great Basin Lecture Outline

Geographic and Cultural Area

Covers approximately 400,000 sq. miles between the Rockies and the Sierra Nevadas (basically all of Nevada, parts of CA, OR, ID, and UT).

• The region contains great diversity—high mountains, low rainfall, deep valleys, high deserts—but is generally dry and arid. It is also characterized by closed drainages. Because of this, the resources are often unpredictable and varied, causing a generally broad-resource adaptive strategy using a wide array of plants and animals (in contrast to the Southwest—corn, beans, etc.).

Chronology of the Great Basin

Jesse Jennings "Desert Culture"—persistent strategy for thousands of years, so can use the ethnographic record to directly interpret past (Danger Cave).

• Paleoindian Period (<12,000–9000 B.P.)
  Most Paleoindian sites have been found around lakes and river banks where animal game was abundant.

• "Big game" hunters; mobile; employing high-quality stone for tools
• Other items found from this time, however, include woven sandals from Fort Rock (10,000 year record/also at Marmes)
• The Great Basin climatically was cooler and moister
• Begins to get drier around 9000 B.P. (Lake Bonneville shrinks to GSL by 9000)
• Artifacts include fluted points, crescents stemmed points
• Dietz site in OR has evidence of Clovis points
  
• Early Archaic (7000–4000 B.P.)
  
• Mazama (Crater Lake, OR) at 6850 B.P.
• At this time the projectile point chronology changes from fluted or stemmed to lanceolate, large side-notched (NSN)
  -Elkos show up in western basin approximately 4000 B.P.
• This period is hot and dry—lakes drying up (Lahotan)
• Increased reliance on processed seeds—therefore increase in groundstone, etc.
• Establishment of a change in settlement pattern—semipermanent winter base camps with storage?
• Settlements concentrated near springs, lacustrine areas, dunes, etc. (or sample bias?)
  
• Middle Archaic (4000–2000 B.P.)
  
• Increased moisture and cooler
• Environment began to be similar to today
• Humboldts and Elkos
• Twined baskets, duck decoys (Tule), more groundstone, pithouse villages(?)
  
• Late Archaic (2000–1000/500 B.P.)
  
• Introduction of bow-and-arrow technology
• Wickiup shelters
• Coiled basketry
• Numic expansion (Western Shoshone/Northern Paiute)
  
• Late Prehistoric/Early Historic (500- ~300 B.P.)
  
• Pottery first shows up (Shoshone brownware)
• Horse
  
• Historic (Postcontact)
  
• Lewis and Clark (bicentennial is approaching)
• Sacajewea’s son (Pomp) is buried just outside of Jordan Valley